The Right Ones
Being with them leads you back to yourself.
Welcome! This is Hope Sparks, a weekly newsletter about making changes in our lives. Did somebody forward this to you? You can subscribe to the Hope Sparks Substack here.
This week I’m diving into:
The Right Ones. Break rules. Make space. Find the right people to lead you back to yourself.
Client Spotlight. Meet Sam. He shares how finding the right one has been a slingshot for his personal and professional life.
Reads & Recs
I talked about rule breaking a few weeks ago. Since then, I've been rummaging in my rule bin. Sifting through how I approach my work. The ways I interact with family. Exploring ways to uniquely follow my life path. And of course twiddling habits and rituals all over.
Sloughing off the old rules can feel terrific. Liberating— as you would imagine. I know it has a lot to do with springtime. Over the years, I have learned to welcome this change system into my life around March.
It’s a conscious decision to to play with the rules, not by them.
Rule breaking also comes with tinges of free falling. Leaving the familiar and colouring out of the lines is not part of my ‘good girl’ manifesto. Which translates into, Hope this has to happen. Without breaking certain cycles, I can end up following outdated or rusty rules. Ones designed to keep me rigid and small.
The side effect of my regular review and reflection is I’m able to see other people’s rules. Clearly.
My read?
Enough with the rules of constant self improvement. The over optimization and perfection of a happy and fulfilling life is not all that. It is not improving our human experience. It is complicating it.
When we strive for more, we risk losing touch with ourselves. We slip into autopilot mode.
“If you stay in a state of intensity or optimization for too long, you hit a point of diminishing returns on quality of life." Dan Koe
I speak to a lot of people from my little office here in Quebec, Canada. Humans at all stages of life. My ear is to the ground. Sensing common pulses. There's a rustling. A restlessness. A feeling like change is afoot—inside and in the outer world.
It’s a 'what's next?' vibe.
People are breaking out of contracts, promises and commitments. They are relinquishing themselves from the ‘shoulds’. Rules that no longer work for them.
But this rule breaking often leaves a space. What to do now or next?
How do we fill this space?
If we were sitting together, right now, this is where I’d lean in. I’d lower and slow my voice to share “This is where life gets truly interesting. When you say NO to what doesn’t work for you, you make space for what does.”
This video below? My father shared these words of advice decades ago. A time when the space felt immense. And lonely.
My invitation to you?
Find the right ones in your life.
They see you. They reflect you. They believe in you so that you can remember what it is to believe in yourself.
“The right ones lead you back to yourself. They remind you of all the pieces of yourself that went missing over the years. The right ones will make you more of the person you’ve always wanted to be: the person you’ve kept quietly inside you all along. The right ones will encourage and inspire you, often without saying a word. The presence of their authentic selves awaken something that’s so similar inside of you, you feel no choice but to rise up and allow it to blossom.”
The right ones teach you not through what they tell you, but simply by being who they are." - Brianna Wiest
WHO is your right ones? Maybe you know them? Perhaps you need more of them?
Over the years, word of mouth has channeled remarkable humans my way. People moving through all types of change. Humans looking to bring their sparky visions to life.
They aren’t sure who to turn to, but follow their intuition. A call to investigate having hope in their corner.
New people get in touch almost weekly.
I may be the right one to change alongside.
If I’m not the fit, I likely know someone who is a fit for them.
Being in your corner to explore the unchartered spaces is what I’ve been designed (and trained) to do.
Book a spot to explore here.
Sticky Situation to Slingshot
Meet Sam Moinet (click here for his heartfelt words) Earlier this year he reached out to explore if I could be the right one. A slingshot to support his vision.
He felt he didn’t want to do it all alone. Why should he?
We all have our habits—the thoughts and paradigms hardwired into our selves and lives. Having someone you trust, who can hold your space to be completely YOU, is what I offer. All the answers inevitably lie within you. Yet, sometimes with a little kickstart, or heaping portion of hope we're able to unhinge certain habits. We retrieve lost parts and integrate new wisdom. It’s then we can reassemble to move upwards.
My support helps to make that happen.
Explore my 1:1 Coaching here and my new site by the amazing Origin Creatives Jordan Owens.
Reads & Recs
WHY small pleasures are a big deal - The paradoxical and cheering aspect of pleasure is how weird and promiscuous it proves to be. It doesn’t neatly collect in the most expensive boutiques. It can refuse to stick with us on fancy holidays. It is remarkably vulnerable to emotional trouble, sulks and casual bad moods. A fight that began with a small disagreement about how to pronounce a word can end up destroying every benefit of a five star resort.
Slow Productivity - Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?
Practice writing scripts for situations where you need to say no. “I find that most HSPs and empaths want to say no, and are capable of it, but we get caught off-guard in situations where we feel we must react immediately, often saying yes or agreeing to things we don’t want to because we are unprepared. By having a script to say a “thank you, but no, or not right now”, or even simply saying “Thanks. I need 24 hours to think about this and then I’ll get back to you” you can stop falling into the trap of immediately saying yes to things you don’t want to do.” - Catherine Andrews
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See you next week. If you enjoyed this read, please invite your friends.
In your corner,
With love,
Hope